The AVL is Weaving!

Today, after three weeks of assembly and troubleshooting and finally warping, I threaded the heddles for the silk lute strap first project.  And then I sleyed the 20-dent reed that Tien gifted me with.  

I didn't think I'd get to the tie-on today, but I did, and not only that, I managed to make a dobby chain and mount it on the dobby, chain it with cable ties I bought today, and I got everything working.  Incredible.  From nothing to patterned cloth in no time flat!

I thought I'd start simply; an 8-harness pattern from Patricia Baine's Linen book.  There is a photo of some sixteenth-century linen and the draft to weave it.  It is the same pattern I wove twelve years ago when I borrowed Rosemary Brock's 8-harness Schacht Baby Wolf, with a mechanical dobby.  

This time, instead of weaving it white-on-white, I used two colors, one warp and one weft, to show the contrast.  See the pattern below.



The diagonal lines are wavy here, showing that my beat was irregular.  Warp tension was at first a bit loose.  Also, harness #5 collapsed suddenly, overhead wire and all, and it turned out to have been caused by the failure of the metal hook on the end of the cable coming up from the dobby, which unbent totally and straight.  Weird.  It might have been pulled suddenly during a jam, or it was simply metal fatigue.  Hopefully I won't have to replace it, but if I did, I'm going to use a slightly thicker guage wire. 

Overall the treadling was light and lovely, and the sheds were PERFECT.  Kudos and praise to AVL and their tireless engineering that is the AVL loom.  Even a comparatively old loom (mine is circa-1979 or '80) bears out this excellence. 

After I'd been through the 20-bar pattern repeat cycle on the dobby bars, and jammed the dobby a couple of times, it seemed that things sort of regulated themselves, and the dobby didn't jam after that.  Once it wasn't jamming, and I adjusted the allen-screw adjustors for the dobby cylinder so that the pins were striking ever so slightly deeper, I started to pick up speed.  It took a very short time only before I was weaving faster than I have ever been able to weave on the Cranbrook.  Clearly this is a whole new world of weaving for me.  Faster and more rhythmic means a more consistent beat (hopefully!) and a more uniform-looking textile.  It feels taut as a fine bowstring and as fleet as the arrow it propels when weaving quickly, as if one were shooting arrows from an English longbow - that kind of effortless, sinewy rapidity. 

The fabric looks quite three-dimensional on the loom; the red threads, in the pattern, stand up above the violet weft.  Add to that that the red color naturally proceeds forward and the cooler violet color backwards, so that it enhances the bas-relief quality.  However, once it is wet-finished, the silk will bed down into itself and the 3-D quality will be diminished a bit. But not totally - the arrangement of the two colors will still retain its foreground/background thing, due to the warm and cool differences.  Additionally, once it is steam-pressed after wet-finishing, all the float threads will take on a lustrous satiny shine.  Wet-finishing will also regularize the wavy diagonal lines a bit, as the energy in the yarn rearranges itself and balances with its neighboring threads.

Another pic:

 And another.  Showing where I started weaving, and how the tension of the thing sort of regularized as I gained rhythm.

More later.  I'm totally chuffed!

My gratitude goes to the previous owner of this loom, and his generosity; and to Tien and Carlos for helping me put it all together.